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Worldwide
-DW Information
Cape City, Nov 30: Thirty white rhinos had been transferred from South Africa to Rwanda in a Boeing 747 on Monday, conversationists stated.
The animals traveled 3,400 kilometers from South Africa’s Phinda Non-public Sport Reserve to Akagera Nationwide Park in jap Rwanda. They launched into this 40-hour journey after months of preparation, stated charity African Parks, which was concerned within the operation.
“We needed to tranquilize them to scale back their stress, which is itself dangerous, and monitor them,” stated African Parks’ CEO Peter Fearnhead.
Why had been the rhinos transferred?
It was a part of a program to replenish the white rhino inhabitants, decimated by poaching for the reason that Seventies.
Additionally reintroduced to the Akagera Nationwide Park had been lions and black rhinos, species which went extinct within the space resulting from poaching and destruction of habitat within the Eighties and 90s.
The park additionally hosts African elephants, African buffalo, Masai giraffes and greater than 490 species of birds.
Why is the white rhino threatened?
The southern white rhino, considered one of two subspecies of white rhino, is taken into account “nearly endangered” by the Worldwide Union for Dialog of Nature (IUCN).
Based on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are at the moment 20,000 southern white rhinos on the planet. White rhino populations decreased by 12% between 2012 and 2017.
The opposite subspecies, the northern white rhino, is getting ready to extinction, with solely two females remaining. Scientists try to save lots of the species by harvesting eggs from one of many two surviving females and sperm from two deceased males to create embryos in an unprecedented breeding program.
The primary menace to those animals is illegitimate poaching. In South Africa, 1000 rhinos had been killed between 2013 and 2017 resulting from excessive demand for his or her horns in sure Asian international locations, primarily China and Vietnam.
Supply: DW
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